Customer Reviews

The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective

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Possehl's book on the Indus Civlization is by no means the bad book which the prior reviewer represents it as being. In fact, it is a very useful overview of the main points of the archaeology that has been conducted on the Harappan Civilization for the past twenty or so years. And far from being a "tedious" read, the book is actually quite enjoyable. For an academic.

The chapters are organized like the spokes of a wheel, approaching this complex and mysterious civilization from a number of different angles, such as religion, architecture, grave burials, writing, etc. There is even an entire chapter devoted to Mohenjo-daro. This reader found Possehl's book to be unusually balanced in its presentations of the various theories of scholars regarding for example the interpretation of the famous Proto Shiva seal or the problem of decipherment of the Indus script.

While it is true that some of the author's dates are out of date--his dates on the Neolithic, for instance, need to be pushed back by about a thousand years--most of the information is quite current, giving detailed descriptions of the excavations of recent sites like Dholavira, Rakhigarhi and Rodji. Certain of the author's preconceptions are debatable, for example he argues that this civilization was not an archaic state with a centralist core of rulers surrounded by a periphery of townsmen--he argues that it was more communal than that--but ultimately this is unconvincing. The Harappan Civilization, as the author himself states, emerged rather mysteriously around 2600 b.c. with a series of sites founded on virgin soil with pre-planned cities that seem to have been designed all at once. There is absolutely no way to do this without a centralized and hierarchical authority. And the author's insistence that there is no evidence for the presence of temples in Mohenjo-daro is not convincing either, for many of the buildings that he points out as originally selected by Marshall and others as possible temples may in fact be otherwise very difficult to explain functionally. And surely his dating of the Rig Veda at about 1000 b.c. is off by at least five hundred or so years, for the major geographical setting of this work is along the Sarasvati river rather than the Ganges, for by the end of the second millenium, the Sarasvati had already long since dried up.

But these minor quibbles aside, the book is very useful and informative, more so than Kenoyer's tome, with its wooden, text book style prose, or Jane McIntosh's with her low resolution brochure-like information. Possehl's is actually much more thorough and comprehensive than either of these, despite his sometimes awkward sentences.

I have been at work on a large historical opus for some years now, and Possehl's book is actually one of the more readable academic works on ancient history. Trust me. If you want good information on the Indus valley, this is the book for you.

--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion: Digital Technologies and the World They Unmake" (McFarland Books, 2011)

Gregory Possehl has planned a series of voluminous books to illuminate the Indus Valley Civilization. Some volumes have appeared, and others are in preparation. This particular book purports to be a summary of the volumes that have appeared and are going to appear. It is a sort of a preview of the entire series.
The book turned out to be a big disappointment, given the excellence of the large volumes by Possehl. While it claims to be a 'contemporary' perspective, many of the theories are hackneyed, and do not go a step beyond the 'received wisdon' of old colonial understanding and framework of Indian past, which is being propagaged with great aplomb by certain Eurocentric Vedicists even today and which seems to have been accepted without hesitation by Possehl.
The book often makes a tedious reading, and compares infavorably with its competing titles, such as Jane McIntosh's 'Indus- A Peaceful Realm' (2002), or even Jonathan Mark Kenoyer's beautifully illustrated 'Ancient Cities of the Indus Civilization' (1998).
There is no doubt that Possehl has given a short shrift to many new ideas and views that are being advocated by Indian archaeologists these days, and in certain cases (e.g. the knowledge of horse in IVC), he seems to be a 'believer' of certain dogmatic scholars who have doggedly refused to come to terms with evidence that runs counter to their long cherished notions.
His dating of the Vedic literature is too late, which would be considered with askance by even eurocentric Vedicists. One wonders who he consulted for his statements to this effect.
It appears that the book was actually written several years ago, but is being published quickly for some unknown reason. His massive volumes being published one by one often contain more current information, a more reasonable analysis.
Having dwelt on the negatives, I must emphasize that an author like Possehl cannot really write a 'bad' book. This book is a big disappoint merely because one expected better from him. I would not spend money on it.

This book is a must have for anyone interested in Bronze Age River Civilizations such as Egypt or Mesopotamis.